Anthony D. Weiner’s letter of resignation was a matter-of-fact two sentences, informing the New York secretary of state, Cesar A. Perales, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that come midnight Tuesday, he was stepping down. But his signature — an oversize looping squiggle, almost larger than the entire typed text of his statement — may offer some clues into his personality, at least according to handwriting experts.

"He’s out of bounds; he’s not within boundaries," said Dianne Peterson, a handwriting expert based in Tennessee. “His emotional slant is that his head overrules his heart; his head is in control of his heart."

Noting the “big hump" that constitutes the core of the signature, Peterson said, “It represents a writer who wants to cover up, that they are protecting themselves through formality, ritual and control.

"They pretend to live by the rules, but they don’t adhere to their own rules in private," she said.

Handwriting experts pointed out that Weiner’s personalized John Hancock was what’s known as a symbolic signature — “a signature which is not legible and the individual letter forms cannot be reasonably recognized," Bart Baggett, a handwriting expert and the president of Handwriting University International, wrote in an email.

"While not an indicator of deception in itself, the person who chooses a symbolic signature normally does so because of excess demands for his signature (salesperson, department head, politician and celebrity)," Baggett wrote. “People who choose a symbolic signature tend to have a cluster of traits in common: excessive ego, secretiveness, need for privacy, arrogance and high self-confidence in their area of expertise."

He added: “Mr. Weiner probably possesses all of the above traits, but also has the ‘optimistic’ upward slant and the fluid wavy stroke symbolizing intelligence and fluid thinking."

Peterson said that the ambiguous letters also signify someone who didn’t “really care what other people think of them," adding that the small mark above the signature represented “a slash of anger, when someone is angry about something."

The full, legible signature on the top of Weiner’s congressional website is not actually his, a spokesman for Weiner confirmed. In fact, although the resignation signature comes at a particularly trying time in his political career, it seems remarkably consistent with previous signatures.

"This seems to be a man with typical traits of a master politician," Baggett wrote.

© 2011 The New York Times Company